The Yorkshire Pudding Club (16 page)

At Elizabeth’s fourteenth-week antenatal appointment, she heard her baby’s heartbeat for the first time. It was going like a racehorse in the last furlong of the National and she panicked immediately and said, ‘What’s up with him?’

Sue, the midwife, laughed kindly and replied, ‘That’s a good strong heartbeat, nice and normal. A baby’s heartbeat is faster than yours or mine.’

Satisfied then that he was all right, Elizabeth lay back and listened to him, totally unconscious of the width of the smile on her face. She had looked at the scan pictures so many times, but hearing him inside her, thriving,
living
, was indescribable. It was so loud, so positive. At least she must be growing him right.

She came home from the surgery to find three tins of Lemon Sunshine emulsion and some white gloss and brushes on the back doorstep.

John had refused to take any money for the paint he had left. He said that it had not cost him anything in the end and so he couldn’t very well charge her for it now, could he? Then the next week he brought her
some huge fluffy white towels that one of the blokes on-site was selling off for his wife who worked in a textile factory. They were supposed to be seconds, although Elizabeth couldn’t see anything remotely faulty about them. She had ended up with a beautiful stack of baby-soft towels for a fiver. This was followed by baby nappies the week after–again, smoke-damaged stock apparently, although like the paint, there was not a hint of anything smutty about the packaging. He brought her enough to keep the little one in nappies until he was twenty-five.

The morning of Helen’s sixteenth week was the anniversary of her daddy’s death. April was a queer month; sometimes it countermanded the dictates of March that spring was on its way and froze the air, sending howling winds and cruel showers. Sometimes it was as balmy as summer and permitted the early May bluebells to fill the woods like thick, violet carpets. Today it was as then, bright and bitter, and the night that followed it would be dangerously beautiful. Chips of diamond stars would be peppered across the black skies and it would be so very cold.

She took red flowers to his grave in Maltstone churchyard–long scarlet Asiatic lilies–and arranged them in the pot there. Funny how we fear death so much, but come to these places to sit amongst the dead and find comfort, she thought, taking a place on the nearby bench that was under the budding cherry-blossom tree, and she talked to her father as if he was there beside her and not buried in the ground.

‘I still feel so sick all the time, Daddy,’ she said. ‘I wish you were here to tell me everything is all right. I know it is really, but it would sound so much better coming from you.’

She did not know how long she sat there telling him about her fears, but her bones were stiff when she got up for a badly needed stretch and flex. She was getting hefty around the middle now, her little waist had all but disappeared, but still her breasts stayed disappointingly small. She wasn’t greedy–she would have been happy with an extra cup-size. Just so that she could fill a normal bra, for once, without having to pad herself up in special bras stuffed with chicken-fillet gel pouches. Not that there was anyone around to enjoy them even if they filled out as big as watermelons. Simon was not involving himself in the pregnancy at all, despite the glimmer of hope she had felt when he had made the effort to get the decorators in for the nursery. She soon came to realize that that had more to do with bandying famous names about than preparing for their baby’s arrival. He had ignored the scan pictures and changed the subject at the mere mention of anything veering towards her condition.

Helen desperately tried to rationalize his reactions and concluded that maybe he just couldn’t relate to something he couldn’t see properly or hold yet. So she stored the bags of baby things that she so much wanted to show off to him in the cold little room at the end of the hallway instead and bided her time. She hated that room where Simon always slept when they had one of those silly arguments that swamped
her like a tidal wave and left her dazed and battered. She did not want her baby sleeping in there and said so to her father’s grave.

‘Goodness me, girl, where’s your Luxmore backbone!’
She heard her father’s voice as clear as day, even though she knew she was imagining it. It was what he always said to her when she needed that extra spur, like when Carmen Varley started to call her ‘posh cow’ names at school and she came home crying. Her father sat her down and talked it through with her; he told her how bullies functioned, and that standing up to Miss Varley would be a far better option in the long run, because bullies did not let go of weaker meat. So Helen had gone into school the next morning, armed with a Luxmore backbone full of iron, only to find Carmen Varley sobbing from a split lip and a triumphant Elizabeth there to greet her with a: ‘I’ve brayed her up for you’ as she put it.

‘Stand up to bullies, darling, don’t ever let them walk all over you,’
that’s what her father had said, and he had been right then and was still right now. Helen decided there and then that she was not going to put her baby in that horrible room. She would clear out the large, sunny guest room and somehow she would get her own way on this.

‘I love you, Daddy–sweet dreams,’ she said to him in death as she had in life, always, every night. Even on the night nineteen years ago, when she killed him.

‘You okay for baby towels?’ Elizabeth asked as she climbed into Janey’s Volvo. Her seventeenth-week
appointment to see the consultant was only half an hour before Janey’s, so they had decided to go up together and have some lunch afterwards in the hospital café.

‘Am I okay for baby towels?’ said Janey with a sigh. ‘I’ve got about three hundred, thanks to Joyce. I was going to ask you if you wanted some. Why? Where’ve you got yours from?’

‘Oh, er…a sale on the market,’ said Elizabeth. If she told her the truth, Janey would regard that as tantamount to an engagement.

‘Got your sample?’ checked Janey. ‘And your notes?’

‘Affirmative,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Do you think Mr Greer will give us an internal?’

‘You should be so lucky!’ said Janey, but Elizabeth didn’t laugh for once and Janey adjusted her tone. ‘You’re not scared, are you?’

‘Well, I’m a bit nervous,’ said Elizabeth.

‘You’ll be okay, you daft bat. You won’t have anything he hasn’t seen before.’

‘I know that,’ said Elizabeth, although that did not make her welcome the prospect any the more.

The hospital was less than a ten-minute drive away, but finding a parking space was the difficult part. Luck was on their side that day though and they slotted into a nice vacancy right by the door. They reported their arrivals to the Antenatal receptionist and then took a seat as instructed, amongst a room full of other women with varying-sized bumps.

‘Well, we’re never going to be seen on time, here!’ said Janey with a huff. ‘I can’t see why they bother
putting a time on your card if you’re going to be seen two hours later,’ and with that she picked up a magazine and started reading about Tantric Sex, although she could not see what all the fuss was about. Who wanted to wait seven hours for an orgasm when George could give her three or four in that time, as last Saturday night proved? She had made a note on the Sunday morning to let him have chilli con carne followed by apple crumble more often.

Eventually, Elizabeth’s name was called and she moved to another queue outside the consultant’s room, to be joined ten minutes later by a moaning Janey.

‘Where do you think we’ll be queuing next?’ she asked, wearily flopping down next to Elizabeth, who did not have time to answer as the consultant’s door opened and it was her turn to go in.

She liked Mr Greer instantly. He reminded her of Alex Luxmore: tall, lean, quiet and courteous. He scanned through her notes whilst a nurse in the background took her sample and tested it. Then she had her blood pressure taken and the results noted and Mr Greer asked if she had any problems, which she hadn’t. He smiled and said, ‘Good, that’s what I like to hear,’ then he helped her up onto the couch, and she lay down stiffly, her muscles tight and tense, dreading the moment when he would slip on a glove and ask her to part her legs. She wasn’t sure if she could.

He had warmed up his hands and felt around her stomach with his head cocked to one side as if filling in a mental checklist. Then he crooked his arm for her to take and he pulled her up by it and said,
‘Everything seems fine. We’ll see you again around thirty-four weeks, Ms Collier.’

‘Is that it?’ she asked.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ said Mr Greer and went over to the sink to wash his hands.

‘No internal?’ Elizabeth said quietly to the nurse.

‘It’s not necessary,’ she replied. ‘They don’t give them these days at this stage. Not unless there’s a problem.’

When Mr Greer had finished with Janey, they both went up to ‘Phlebs’ to have their bloods taken. Elizabeth had elusive veins and the midwife would prod and poke at her arm taking bloods, so it was a relief to have the experts on the case. The older the pregnant woman, the greater the risk of the baby having Down’s syndrome, so their blood was to be screened to assess the risks.

‘What if it’s high?’ asked Elizabeth.

‘Well, you’ll be offered an amniocentesis,’ said the blood nurse, ‘but that’s got its own risks. Why don’t you cross that bridge if and when you come to it? The blood results are taking about two to three weeks to come through at the moment.’

‘Three weeks?’

‘Try and put it out of your mind until then. I know it’s hard, but the radiographers take very thorough scans.’ The nurse stuck a plaster on Elizabeth’s arm and declared, ‘All done!’

‘The woman who scanned me said she had done a really thorough check and couldn’t see any abnormalities,’ said Janey to Elizabeth, getting out of the chair next to her.

‘Scanned you? You sound like a bag of peas!’

‘Don’t you of all people talk to me about peas, missus! Anyway, whilst we’re on the subject of grub, let’s hit the baked spuds. I think we deserve one–what do you think?’ said Janey, and marched her off in the direction of food without waiting for an answer.

Helen picked up the phone to Elizabeth’s chirpy, ‘Hello.’

‘Hello, yourself,’ she said back.

‘What are you doing? You sound puffed out,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Oh, I’m just clearing a few bits and pieces out of the guest room.’

‘Well, don’t overdo it,’ said Elizabeth. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Oh, fine,’ Helen lied, because she had just been sick again. She had mentioned her endless vomiting to her consultant last week at her seventeen-week appointment and he had offered her some drugs that would help, but the thought of them entering her baby made her decline. He said that prolonged nausea was unfortunately normal in some cases and suggested a few alternative remedies and she listened, without telling him that she had tried them all already.

‘It’s just a quickie because I’m at work, but I wanted to see if you were okay.’

‘I’m absolutely fine. Thank you for worrying about me,’ said Helen, who felt over-sensitive to sympathy in her weakened state and had to gulp back some tears fast.

‘Well, look after yourself,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Don’t go doing too much hard work. Go and have a wander around the shops instead and spend some of your millions.’

‘I went shopping this morning with my mother for some fresh air,’ said Helen.

‘Did you buy any?’

‘Ha, ha. Guess who I saw? Your friend!’

‘I don’t have any friends except you two,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Everyone hates me.’

‘Oh, shut up. I saw John Silkstone.’

Elizabeth tried not to be interested but failed dismally. ‘Oh? Where did you see him then?’

‘Babyworld, can you believe? He was looking at a lovely blue rocking chair and a footstool.’

‘Really?’ said Elizabeth, whose nostrils were suddenly full of the smell of a big, fat, lying rat. Especially when the rat in question turned up with a cargo of furniture that very same evening in the back of a large van and tried to tell her they were from a fire-damaged warehouse. Both chair and stool were,
by startling coincidence
, in a complementary shade of blue to the décor of her lounge. He was as strong as an ox and carried them both in, putting them
in situ
whilst she stood there smouldering and waiting for his big, fat, lying rat mouth to open.

‘This will be just the job, excuse the pun, for you to relax in before the baby’s born. Then when he’s here, you can both rock yourselves to sleep in it,’ John said, beaming proudly and nodding with approval at how good the two pieces looked by the window.

‘Lot of fire-damaged warehouses about these days, aren’t there?’

His smile withered when he saw how narrowed her eyes were.

‘Er…well, yes, I suppose there are.’

‘You bloody liar!’ she snarled at him. ‘You were spotted in Babyworld buying this earlier on today. What the hell are you up to, John Silkstone?’

He sighed and held up his hands in resigned defeat. At least he did not try to keep on lying.

‘Okay, I’ll come clean. I just wanted to help you.’

‘Help?
Help
, is it? I don’t need your sodding charity!’

‘Charity?’ he said, blocking out the light from the window and looking like a big black shadow. ‘This isn’t charity, Elizabeth. They’re gifts, you know–the stuff that people give you and don’t expect anything back for. But you, you haven’t got the capacity to understand that. You’re so hard to give anything to.’

‘I don’t
want
anything given to me!’ she said, turning half-feral.

‘So this is how you’re going to bring up your baby, is it then, Elizabeth?’ he said. ‘Never learning to accept anything, never letting anyone be nice to him, and being that flaming hard he’ll never recognize a bit of kindness when it happens? You’ll teach him to push folks away all the time and not trust a soul? Is that what you want for him, eh, Elizabeth? To be as big a block of ice as you are?’

She stared at him, not able to bat anything back because she was in shock. His words had got right through to the core of her and made it listen. She had
not thought of it before–that she would be her baby’s point of reference and that he would pick up on how she was with people: the way she could not let her defences fall ever and found it so hard to trust even those who had never let her down. John had hurt her with what he had just said and she knew she’d hurt him too, that was obvious from the way he was shaking his head at her.